- My goal for this year is 300 books. I’m almost positive I hit it this year, but since I couldn’t post ALL the books I read, I can only guesstimate at how many I read. This year I want to know or sure how many I rad and get the stats.
- Read my ARCs early: I want to read my ARCs earlier. I know for a fact that there used to be a 2 week window where you were supposed to wait to review them closer to the publishing date. But the more I wait now, the more behind I am lol I get backed up with reviews and try not to overwhelm my audience more than one or two a day, so yeah.
- Up my Netgalley Average: I keep saying I want to do this, but it’s never going to happen lol I can’t stop requesting lol It’s just just going to get worse before it’s better at this point lol
- Making sure to keep track of the books I read through my spreadsheet and my reading journal. This is going to go way different now that I can take count of everything lol
DISCLAIMER
I am still a YA librarian at heart, so I cater all my content towards those teens. Though I might not be in the branches, I still am buying books for and making graphics for all those librarians who depend on me to know what I’m talking about. So I read mostly YA and MG and my suggestions and the books I read for these challenges are YA coded. Even when i was at the branches I did an exercise with my teens where we would see how many we could get on some of these challenges (because there’s not one specifically for them) with only reading YA books. And it kind of stuck with me. I like to read them to give them some kind of recommendations if they don’t feel they’re ready for Adult yet.
Ok so challenge wise I’m doing some well known challenges, but also some personal ones! So here we go:
PERSONAL
Read more of what I order: If you know me or you’ve followed along with my blog ever, you know I am doing A-OK with reading YA. But I also need to read more MG and more YA non-fiction. Why? I order from there and last year I don’t think I even read 5 of each. And I hate that. I will do better next year.
As usual I want to do the Read Around the USA challenge like I do every year. And of course I will still be doing the bonus reads from around the world.
Read more genres: Last year I legit feel like I ONLY read romance and some thrillers. Not AT ALL how I usually am. I normally read ALL the things as long as there’s some romance in it. In 2024 I want to get back to that.
Youth Media Award Winners Challenge: This one is a really personal one. I’m trying to read more award winners because I want to make some changes in my career. I want to see more of what they might be looking for in these books. And because of that, I want to challenge myself to read the winners. And if I can achieve this, I will also read the honorable mentions.
READ MORE: Intersectionality: This one is because I want to shine the light on the fact that people seem to break up identities and forget that sometimes they can be all in one person. So I want to read about and acknowledge those that have more than one identity. I’d like to focus on them as a single character who has all these traits that make them one vs they have this, and this, and this. If that makes any sense.
Monthly Check-In on my Challenges: I want to make sure I stay on top of them. I tend to look at them like 3 times over the year, but next year I’m going to really try hard to complete at least one lol
WELL-KNOWN
A-Z Challenge: I’ve added a number option as well. And for an extra added layer of chaos, I’m doing both author’s last name AND titles.
PopSugar Reading Challenge: I fail this every year lmao But it’s because by half the year I’m sick of going by a prompt and just want to read my own thing.
Novelist’s Monthly Challenge: It gives you a month a challenge, but I don’t want to do it by the month. I’m just going to do it as I go on. But it had some good prompts and I really want to have some fun with this one.
52 Book Club Challenge: This is another one where I thought the prompts were cool and I wanted in on the fun lol
Diverse Baseline Challenge: Gives 3 prompts every month. Can do one or all of them. And they all center books with diversity in them.
Read Harder Challenge: I’m only doing the one with the original prompts because I don’t want to pay for challenge prompts lol But I still think it’ll be fun to do and read.
A lot of these are the same from last year, but they’re still a little different. I’ve tailored them to what I’m looking to read more of in 2026.
Have you made your goals? Do you have any challenges? Let me know in the comments!